About Us
What is GripOnz?
Griponz is a sportswear brand based in Auckland, New Zealand with a focus on quality and sustainability. Our grip socks are made here in New Zealand by an award winning kiwi sock manufacturing company. This means we can work closely with our supplier to ensure the highest quality, while using premium and unique materials that are not available from mass producers overseas.
Who is GripOnz?
GripOnz was started by Ben & Alex, the founders of NZBootroom - New Zealand’s most trusted boot sellers for the past 3 years. We are two young lads from Auckland who met back in 2015 playing football in the same team at school.
When and where did the idea of GripOnz start?
The idea of starting a sportswear brand came about in the summer of 2021/2022 when we were both sitting in our basement building NZBootroom’s website. Both excited at launching our own online store, we started to discuss selling more than just boots. It was just a thought at this point - but the idea was on the table. After looking into it more, we decided we didn’t want to just resell wholesaler’s products, but that we wanted to design and make our own products - this is how the idea of GripOnz was born. We knew there was a lot of work to be done, but the idea was exciting and we were up for the challenge.
How did we make GripOnz happen?
GripOnz was slowly built over the course of two years, but this was far longer than we first anticipated as we both had other full time commitments. Working full time in Auckland (Alex) and studying at the University of Otago (Ben) meant neither of us had much spare time, so GripOnz was just a side project on top of our full time commitments. We slowly chipped away at different tasks and ticked off new things week by week. We would have regular zoom calls from Auckland to Dunedin and catch up to discuss what we had been working on.
Why did we start GripOnz?
Ever since we started New Zealand Bootroom, it has always been our dream to have our very own sportswear brand to work alongside it. The NZBootroom journey started in our final year of highschool when we started up a small instagram page just for reselling boots. Our followers loved the content and the page just kept on growing and we have now sold over 1000 pairs of boots! It was clear that the kiwi sporting community loved having a locally run online store they could rely on for their boots, so we thought why not take it to the next level and give them one for sportswear and accessories too.
